Street View

Google Maps might be the go-to for all your travel or location discovery needs, but they lack one important thing: sound. It’s hard to recreate what you might experience in a given area, but one ambitious project is giving Street View just that. Sounds of Street View brings a more ambient feel to your 'pivot and leap' browser experience.

The Cancun Underwater Museum is the location of the collection of humanoid sculptures you’re about to see. Collected by the Catlin Seaview Survey and uploaded straight to Google Maps, this exploration is free for any user to take part in, be it with your desktop computer through a web browser or on your smartphone. At this time Google Cardboard integration is unknown.

Google Maps has added a time machine, adding historical photos from earlier Street View captures that allow users to scroll back and see how locations have changed. Street Video media collection has been underway since 2007, giving Google plenty of old imagery to choose from, and allowing for an insight into how building projects and the shifting seasons affect different places.

A couple years ago, Google kicked off an experiment that included house numbers from Google Street View in reCAPTCHAS, the means by which websites reduce spam. Today on the Google Online Security blog, the company detailed improvements it has made since then, saying, "Street View and reCAPTCHA technology just got smarter."

One of the best reasons to use Google Maps is to explore areas you may not otherwise visit regularly, if at all. A new project named “Night Walk” offers up a tour of Marseille, as if you were strolling the streets and back alleys on a warm summer evening. Street art and points of interest are highlighted along the way, with an immersive audio guide bring the experience to life.

Google has had its Street View imagery in the Google maps application for a long time. At first, this information was a street level view of what you would see on some city streets. Over time, the Street View experience expanded into showing people landmarks that they might not get to visit otherwise.

Google has been bumping into pockets of privacy violations across the globe recently, the latest of which has taken place in South Korea. This follows a recent issue in Canada, which arose from issues with advertisements and was resolved with an agreement, and a bigger issue in France that surfaced last year and culminated in a big (except for Google) fine.

There's a show on television called Top Gear, one in which they investigate and race and test loads of high-powered vehicles of all types. Google found themselves in a situation where they were allowed to head to the official test track for Top Gear this year, recording their visit in a rather unique way - with a Google Street View vehicle. Here you'll see the results both from within and and outside the vehicle as it moves at a reasonable pace around the track.

The server racks and computer shelves of CERN might not be the first place you'd expect to find LEGO lurking, but the CERN Computing Centre team was ready with some Easter Eggs when the Google Street View cameras came calling. Google took its photo-documenting systems round the European Organization for Nuclear Research earlier this year, allowing Google Maps users to navigate the corridors virtually. However, in among the Higgs Bosons there are some hidden gems a little easier to find: aliens, gorillas, and more, all made of LEGO.

Google has announced a new feature of fans of Street View that allows the user to make their own personal Street View imagery. The Street View experience can be made by anyone using Google Photo Sphere tech or with a DSLR camera. The idea here is to allow the user to create their own interactive maps of their travels for friends and family to enjoy.